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Holy rural! The ferry crossing from Mwanza to the opposite side of the bay brought us towards Geita and many, many things I had never expected to see but were nonetheless not surprising or out of place. There are not as many hills over here and the landscape stretches out to the horizon, interrupted by copses of trees. They are trees I could not hope to name, but their branches, sparse with vegetation reach upwards. Some would be more suited to a Dr. Suesses’ storybook. The buildings are clustered sporadically. We drove by one or two compounds standing in solitaire and then would reach a collection. They are built of clay or bricks with corrugated sheet metal pinned down by rocks forming the roof. Most are rectangular, smaller than a family or sitting room, others are circular and have thatched roofs. Doors are propped upright against their structure, windows stand empty of glass and shutters are thrown open with the daylight. We passed through several more commercial areas with tiny shops, stalls, and blankets laid out to display the seller’s goods. On the surface there is little difference between the markets here in Geita and in Mwanza, but they are not the same. In Mwanza, the women who sell their wares have pride in the produce set before them. In Geita, there is a sense of weariness and the goods splayed out hold little appeal. It is the worst second hand shop you’ve ever stepped into and along with clothing, there is fresh produce but the tired aura is omnipresent.
This is the land that SUVs were built for. The road was unpaved and we cruised along, every piece of the landrover reverberating with the uneven terrain making conversation impossible. Where there was roadwork ongoing to improve and smooth out the road, piles of dirt stood as markers of where to veer off to either side. In the two hours, and countless detours, I saw only two red arrows directing traffic. The road is carved out in red dirt, marring the countryside and stretching straight without end.
The first health center we stopped at to deliver reagents was a collection of three single storey brick buildings creating a U-shape. There was no outward indication that it was a health center and those meeting us wore no uniform or insignia to designate themselves as staff. We opened our carefully packed cooler, extracted a small box and handed it to one of the staff to put into refrigerated storage so that they might begin again to offer syphilis testing. The box of reagents that the local health system has been unable to provide for the last three months, and sometimes longer, is little larger than a box of allergy medications. As small as they may be and as anticlimactic as the hand off was, that one box was all that was standing in the way of the screening program.
After checking into the “guest house,” it’s like a little motel and I just killed a bug on my pillow case so I’m not quite sure how great a sleep I’ll get but it’s a huge step up from some of the guest houses we passed by, we planned to set off for a health center 45 minutes away. As luck, and the condition of the local roads, would have it, our tire was gushing air when we returned to the car from checking-in. The driver took one look at it, walked around to the back of the car and two minutes later returned wearing blue coveralls and the spare. With no fuss, he set to changing it, like it was nothing, an everyday occurrence. After seeing the roads, it was honestly three hours of off-roading and if you didn’t have to pee at the beginning of the trip, you sure as hell did by the end, flat tires probably are an every day occurrence.
There must be some grape-vine in the area, as rural as it is, because no sooner had the flat been removed did a “mechanic” from a nearby “garage” show up and offer to fix it. So off went the mechanic and Christopher to start work on the tire. Within ten minutes the spare was on and we were headed to the garage for the repair. I’m sure there was a proper entry to the repair shop, but our driver didn’t care to look for it and instead went straight over the roadside barrier and pulled right up front and center. After seeing that move, all I could do was shake my head and stifle a giggle. No wonder we had a flat, I mean really, it’s more of a surprise that it was only one. It took about five guys standing around observing the work of one or two and almost an hour to remove the tiny, there were two and they were less than an inch, spikes that had caused the flat. It was another half hour of negotiating the price before we were on our way again, driving into the sunset in search of the next health center.
By the time we reached it, the sun had set and local nightlife was in full swing. Pool tables and plastic tables were crowded around as music blasted from the nearby shops. We jostled our way along the road, avoiding the donkeys and children toddling by as young men and women cracked into the beer and good times. The high beams of the car were barely able to cut through the dust and darkness and the homes we had passed outward bound had blended into the landscape but for the occasional fire. Our trek was interrupted by two gates, both stretching across the road and manned by a single security guard with an impressive piece strapped around his shoulder and cradled lovingly in his arms. I’m still unsure of the purpose of the check-points, we certainly had no trouble after a rapid fire exchange of Swahili, but it may have something to do with the local gold mine.
And here I am now, in my hopefully bug free room trying to ignore the smell of stale cigarettes and I don’t know what and don’t want to know what from just outside the window. They’re burning something that has a horribly sweet, sickly smell. The people who run the hotel are incredibly kind which makes it slightly more comfortable and I think it may be the first time I’ve had room service delivered and precluded by a hand-washing service (with the exception of airplanes and the moist towelette they hand out).
Tomorrow the real work begins and I won’t go so far as to say bed is beckoning me but it’s a place to sleep so I’m happy to take it for tonight. Of all the day’s images there is one I will have no trouble remembering. In a tiny town in Tuscany, San Rocco a Pilli, just outside of Sienna, I ran past fields and fields of sunflowers. Their bright yellow faces smiled warmly, beaming into the skies in search of the sun. Today, we drove past a small farmer’s field of sunflowers. Under the same sun, they had lost all color, become withered and brittle. It was a field of sunflowers that now all drooped under their own weight, hiding from the day as they sought the earth.
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